


Cage

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Confined/Caged, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 18:10:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6125518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was lonely inside the cave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cage

**Author's Note:**

> Written for kink_bingo, for the Confined/Caged square.

It was lonely inside the cave. He was almost willing to believe that it had always been lonely, but sometimes he dreamed. There had been people once whose faces changed--and _didn't_ change, not really--and there'd been fighting, and blood. The heavy weight of a ring of gold around his head. Now, nothing.

Son Goku sat at the back of the cave, in the dark, and stared at the stone bars that wouldn't budge for all his strength.

Birds sang somewhere outside in the trees, and sometimes he saw dragons far off in the distance--not the big ones he vaguely recalled from very long ago, but the small, stupid kind. _Youkai ride them,_ the quiet little voice in the back of his head offered, but it was just noise to him. He didn't remember what a 'youkai' was. He didn't even remember where that voice had come from, though it cried sometimes in his sleep when it thought he wouldn't notice.

Sometimes bats slipped through the bars, and mice, and snakes. Sometimes he ignored them. Sometimes he ate them.

He didn't know what to make of the boy standing on just the other side of his prison, staring at him in mute consternation with wide, violet eyes.

"Who are you?" the boy asked, frowning when he didn't answer. "Hey! Are you awake?"

He unfolded himself slowly, the shackles around his wrists clinking faintly as he flowed to all fours, crept cautiously closer. He knew...he knew that face, only not really. It was too young, maybe, to be the face he remembered. But that bright hair, that scowl...he knew those.

The kid didn't back away as he crept closer, though any animal with any sense would have bolted from his hunting crouch. One brow arched at him, but the boy held his ground, eyes flicking from the chains around Son Goku's wrists to the chain and collar around his neck, examined his pointed ears and ragged-sharp claws with interest. Son Goku knew he was dangerous. Maybe the boy thought the bars made him safe.

"Why are you in there?"

He stared, silent, and sat back at last on his heels. He didn't remember that part. He thought he'd done something bad once, but twice? The little voice thought not. The little voice was just sad all the time. There was a word-- _inconsolable._ He liked the weight of it, though he couldn't quite grasp its meaning.

They stared at each other, the boy and the heretic, and Son Goku expected at any moment for there to be yelling.

Eventually the boy shook his head and left, but not without a troubled glance over his shoulder. After he was gone, even the echoes of his footsteps faded, Son Goku leaned his head against the bars of his cage and whined, high and soft in his throat, his ears pressed flat to his skull.

He was still there when the boy came back the very next day, and another wary staring match ended with the boy reaching out, resting his hand very lightly on the top of Son Goku's head. Instinct told him to bite, to grab and twist and break. He could be...he could be _caged_ like that, caged by power that would split his skull and force him into a tiny box and slam the lid. Oh, he would growl and growl and scare this half-fledged creature away.

But his growl came out a whimper, and the fingers on his head were soft, combed through his tangled hair and slid with ticklish curiosity over his long, tapered ears. He gave a whining moan and pressed into the touch, starved for it in a way he hadn't realized until now.

The boy made an unhappy sound but didn't stop petting. Not for a good, long time.

"Hey." He looked up, found that same troubled look from the day before staring down at him. "Is there...who's taking care of you? Does someone come feed you?" he added when Son Goku eyed him blankly. He didn't understand. Who would come here for him?

The next time the boy came, he had a pack slung over his shoulder. He pulled things out of it that made Son Goku's mouth water at their scent and offered one through the bars.

"Here. C'mon, take it."

He edged closer, leaned up and sniffed, tried a bite. Taste exploded on his tongue--meat and spices tucked inside still-warm breading--and he closed his eyes, growling rapturously. He blinked them back open at the boy's incredulous sound, whined softly at the, "You want me to _feed_ you?" Wasn't that what the boy was doing? He stretched his neck up again cautiously and took another bite. The boy sighed but didn't drop his hand or take the food away. "Fine. I wish I knew what you were."

What he was? He was Son Goku, what else?

When he reached the boy's fingers, he licked, tasted salt and skin. Tasted sunlight and heat. He knew that taste, knew it deeper than memory, and he pushed his head into the boy's hand, a whimper strangling in his throat. _Knew_ this person.

"Hey! Are you...hey...."

_"S-san...zo...."_

The boy just stared at him. "Who's that?"

When it rained the boy sat under the overhang, close to the bars. When it snowed he tromped up the mountainside in heavy boots and warm scarves, grumbling at the cold. In the summer he stayed longer; the rest of the year he snuck what time he could, though sometimes his visits were short. He always brought food, always came back. Sometimes he paced the bars, eyeing the places where they joined the roof of the cave or sank into the mountain itself. Son Goku watched him, watched his face as it changed, grew longer and leaner and more like the face he remembered every day.

It worried him that the boy--the man--had started to go quiet. Not that he'd ever talked much before, but now he looked like coming here hurt him, wouldn't meet Son Goku's eyes.

"Sorry, monkey," the man said one day, staring at the ground. "I've got to go." He said that every day, but this time the words yawned wide and empty inside Son Goku's head, and he could see an endless string of the lonely days from before stretching unbroken before him, until he forgot even the memory of sun.

The little voice inside was screaming at him, pushing him to move, now, before it was too late.

He forgot his claws but remembered what hands were for, and he reached out desperately, hooked his fingers in heavy cloth and pulled the man right up to the bars. The man shouted, struggled, but he ignored that. He'd never been so close before, and he buried his face against the man's hard stomach, breathed deep as he slung an arm around narrow hips, holding him there. Smelled sun and skin, and sex.

Cloth tore under his claws, but he was careful not to rake the flesh beneath. He found a strange-familiar hardness waiting for him, and though the man smelled good enough to eat, he contented himself with nuzzling closer, lapping at hot skin with curiosity quickly replaced by enthusiasm. Long, slow licks all the way up the hard length had the man twitching in his grasp, and he whined, head buzzing with hunger of a completely different sort than he was used to, swallowing against a watering mouth.

"Nnh," the man groaned, hands tightening on his hair, and this time something in their grip made him listen. "Not like that. Here."

He held still, let the man move his head closer and opened his mouth for the hard length that pressed against his lips. "No teeth," was hissed at him, and he relaxed the restraining arm, because now the man was moving on his own, stroking that fascinating thickness in and out of his mouth. He liked the taste, liked the fullness on his tongue, and he growled his approval, tilting his head until that length could stroke deeper. He wished he'd remembered this earlier. That stupid voice had been selfish, no help at all.

He tightened his grip again when the man tried to get away, relented only a little when his mouth was filled with something sharp and spicy. He didn't mind. It tasted the same as his fractured memories, and that was good. But the hands patting shakily at his head as he let the man slip free of his mouth made him sad.

_"Don't,"_ he rasped through a throat that had almost forgotten speech. _"Don't l-leave."_

Two hands fisted tight in his hair, convulsively, and pressed his head to a body gone rigid before him.

"So come with me," the man said, voice soft and very sure, and didn't let go.

For the second time in a thousand years, Son Goku watched the bars of his cage turn to sand.


End file.
